Valve have been proving time and time again, that they are at the forefront of innovating games. I will always remember playing Half Life 1, being the first fully 3D shooter game I played, that told a story through its gorgeous environments. Team Fortress (or Half Life Deathmatch) being the first shooter games I've ever played online. Half Life 2 revolutionizing the way shooter games tell stories yet again, bringing spectacle to it, interactive cutscenes, great character animations, believable game-physics and great set-pieces. (The episodes coming after the main game only continued to be as great - especially in terms of story-telling and ending on one of gamings greatest cliffhangers). Portal, revolutionizing first-person puzzle games and spawning tons of games aiming to copy it. Team Fortress 2 revolutionizing a very homogenic online-shooter market at that time, with character-based skills and different game-modes infused (later to be copied pretty amazingly by blizzard with overwatch and made into an even better game). I won't ever forget being on a LAN-Party and playing Left4Dead for the first time, revolutionizing the way cooperative gameplay was possible, may it be a shooter or any other genre. Portal 2 doubling down on the strengths of its predecessor and adding cooperative play to it. I'm not even going to count the hours I've sunk into Counter Strike, Dota and the likes.
Having waited for a sequel, prequel or ANY entry in the half life series for 13 years, the expectations were considerably high. And how does Valve answer that much anticipation? By creating another milestone in video-game history. A fully fledged AAA VR-Title that is truly a glimspe into the future of gaming and a testament to the masterclass in storytelling that happens in valve titles.
Half Life Alyx is the best VR-Title out there. It understands the strengths and weaknesses of current state VR and distills so so many memorable moments from the genius game development process. It's obvious that playing a shooter game in VR has other inclinations than sitting comfy in your chair and swinging your mouse elegantly on your giant-size deskpad. It's a much more physical experience, asking you to move around, consider your positioning a lot more in detail and even get on your knees to get in cover. But what really blew me away is the fact, that a VR-Experience makes so many elements of a shooter-game just SO much more meaningful. Reloading a gun takes time and movement. You have to reach for your ammuntion, have to open up the chamber and put the ammo inside one by one, you have to close it again and make it ready to shoot. Compare this with a simple press on button R. Getting in cover is similar - you have to find a spot that will suffice in height or width to really be able to find cover behind it. It's not a button press and your character just leans against a wall with his body being visible, but still invincible to incoming fire. You are low on health and need to use a syring but enemy fire is raining down on you or headcrabs are already mounting up to jump at your face? Good luck, because you have to get the syringe out, press a button and ram it into your body and wait for a couple of seconds for the fluid to be injected. All of this means, you don't have to fight hordes of enemies to feel the slightest tension. There are parts in this game, where you only have one enemy and it's as intense as it gets. I literally sweated while playing this game.
You have to find new ammo or syringes? Prepare to rummage cupboards, shelves and the likes in a world that has such a high level of detail, it will leave you in awe up until the very end. Everything reacts believably, you can write things on windows with a marker and it just works. If you grab a bottle of water and move it around, you see the fluid inside being rendered physically correct. You can even pick up a can and throw it at a pigeon to spook it, it just works. (i totally did that a couple of times :P) But more excitingly than that, to interact with certain devices you will have to hack them. And the mini-games you have to do for hacking are as well thought out as every other element of the game. Everything you do will require you to be physical, sometimes with force, sometimes with dexterity and sometimes with agility. It's a beautifully rendered world, with a sense of scale and a level of detail you just can't put into effect like that without using a VR-Headset. It's truly unbelievable and something I won't be able to convey with words. You just have to see it to believe and especially FEEL it.
Everything I've so far covered is absolutely great, but Half Life Alyx is also masterclass in level-design/mission-design and storytelling. The way tension is built up in here is a peak in the industry, rivaling and even surpassing great moments in movie-history. I somehow always ended up thinking about peak Spielberg, with the kitchen-scene in Jurassic Park, or later on the hiding-sequence in that abanonded house in War of the Worlds. Chapter 7 of Half Life Alyx is so well made, I can't even put in into words. Without wanting to spoiler, you will shit your pants so many times while playing this game. (also big big trigger warning for anyone with a variant of arachnophobia, this game doesn't mean well for you).
The voice acting is equally good, it compliments the great moments the game has to offer so well. As an example: the first time you enter a very dark area and barely see anything, Alyx starts talking about random things because she is scared. That's soooo ME, when I'm scared. The conversations you have with Russel throughout the game are sometimes funny and always a great insight into the world and lore of the game.
And they cap it all of with a mind-bending finale that is a massive fan-service in terms of story, but also a loud and clear SCREAM for what you can expect to experience with VR in the future.
I can't praise this experience and valve as game developers enough. Even though TLOU2 is probably my favorite game of all time, Alyx is definitely my game of the year 2020. Because something like this has no right to be out in 2020. With nothing coming even close or anything that might come close announced for the future.
VR is still niche, the pricepoint is just too high, the headsets are uncomfortable and the quality of those headsets is far from perfect. But what Alyx has showed me 2 years after I purchased this headset and played through a handful of good and a lot more mediocre and half-baked productions, is, that VR is the future of gaming.

Whereas the first entry of this series felt much more like a prototype (or a really good student project), 'We were here together' feels like a fully fledged game now. You have to play this with a friend, as you are in different areas with complimenting information that each side needs to solve these puzzles. The main twist is, you don't see what the other sees and are reliant on a walkie talkie solely. So much like Escape Rooms IRL.
The game has basically 10 bigger puzzles that range from quite easy to frustrating, but not because they are too hard, but because the lack of info often times lets you follow wrong hunches for too long.
Still, it was a fun experience.

In a Q&A I attended for one of his movies, Gaspar Noé once told the audience, that his first ever trip was watching 2001 by Kubrick when he was a kid. I absolutely knew what he was talking about.
I had the same feeling while being sucked through the screen in the last 30 minutes of this game.
It feels like an interactive art installation with a narrative that metaphorically evolves on a cosmic scale. If you tried to sum up the premise of this game, it’s: a moody saxophone-ridden noir detective thriller in which someone dear to you gets shot and you try to stop it by reversing that shot, the loud Big Bang.
And that’s were it’s connected to our universe, because in order to do so you travel through the very fabric of everything.
The experience never lets you off by getting too comfortable. The perspective, the way you interact with what is shown on screen, EVERYTHING that happens changes constantly, there is no way to describe it universally. Some of the puzzles are a bit finicky and unguided to the point, it ends up being a little frustrating, but still: It’s unique in the best sense possible and not something I will forget soon.
Genesis Noir is testament to the power videogames as a medium have, as it transcends genres and defies expectation time and time again.
I can only recommend playing through this experience with good headphones, a great and big screen and the patience you need to let it all pay off.

There are many beautiful little puzzle games out there, but The Gardens Between secured a special place in my heart. Visually it plays in the same league as my all-time favorite series Monument Valley and I LOVE time-manipulation puzzles. This game is yet again a perfect example of how far a soundtrack can carry atmosphere and the narrative. The subtle ambient soundscapes by Tim Shiel are the perfect background noise for sentimentality.
And I'm a wildly sentimental person that ends up lingering in memories more often than is probably good for me. Within those memories time gets very blurry and inconsistent and I try to re-arrange pieces of certain moments. The Gardens Between captures that process unbelievably well. The time manipulation is such a fitting puzzle-mechanic in a story about how memories define our relationships, who we are and what the future might be for us. I'm in tears.

Fallen Order is such a weird patchwork game. It channels a lot of the great games of recent years: platforming and action sequences remind of Naughty Dog's uncharted, the fighting and progression is a very lightweight take on soulslike games with bossfights that are better than they had to be, in some instances reminding me of God of War. All of these things are not as refined as in the aforementioned games, but still - they work surprisingly well together. The only thing that's a bit of a disconnect for me, is the way the fighting is supposed to be strategic and difficult and that just doesn't feel right when you are wielding a light saber and fighting notoriously bad soldiers like the stromtroopers.
Visually the game is absolutely stunning and it's a joy to explore all the (sadly too linear) places the different planets have to offer.
Overall this is a Star Wars Game through and through, it captures the very essence of Star Wars. The classic soundtrack, very familiar characters (bd-1 is as likeable as all the other droids), the sense of exploring other planets and the blueprint of a Star Wars story. At this point I'm asking myself if it's a contractual obligation to follow the same narrative over and over again, if you want to do something in this franchise. But it's fine, because I've been waiting for this since I played the great Jedi Knight series back in the day and this feels like the proper continuation. Can't wait to play a sequel, in which I'd love to see some more channeling of other games. Mass Effect for example. I want to travel to more planets, maybe have a crew and a lot more interaction with other characters. So basically: Respawn, please do a new KOTOR (light) with the help of Bioware.

Bugsnax is a joy to play. And I don't say that solely based upon the fact, that the main theme of this game is FOOD. No, I say that because usually I wouldn't look for characters to get attached to in a game like this, but in the end this gave me a LOT more than for example the characters of Ghost of Tsushima (random comparison, because that was the last game I played) did. Each and every one of those grumpus have a distinct personality. Granted, they are oversubscribed and more like caricatures, but even if the narrative is simplified to be enjoyed by young and old, their perspective, anxieties and their needs are believable and make for a heartfelt story that feels like a fitting antidote to the isolation and loneliness of the past year. It's about building a community with people coming together despite their different backgrounds. I'm also surprised by the way LGBTQ+ representation in this game is normalized rather than sensationalized or dramatized. All the queer characters lead normal lives, have normal and healthy relationships, are wholesome and a natural part of the community. I think it's beautiful that this portrayal is possible in a fantasy world and It's wonderful how many things they get right. Apparently the devs also valued the same level of representation in the production of this game. So a lot of praise for that as well.
But it's not just the characters and the story that make this game a joy to play. Catching the (creatively and hilariously named) Bugsnax and the light puzzling with it stays fun until the very end.

It's crazy how a game amazed me, when I was 8!!! years old and still amazes me, when I'm 31. My love for Blade Runner hasn't faded after all these years, may it be the movie(s) or any other media that's related. There is no other universe I'd like to spend more time in.
Looking at this as a game, It's unbelievable to me this came out in 1997. I mean yes, this has all the pitfalls a game of that era could have (including game/progress breaking bugs), but so many set pieces are beautiful, choices matter (a lot), tons of different endings and even some rng-elements thrown into the storyline (which we discovered just now, after 20 years) make this a truly special game. It was such a nice throwback playing this game again.

I'm blown away.
I wasn't expecting anything unique of Katana Zero, until I read and heard it's praise in this community. Before that I thought this is just another game with 80's noir aesthetics, just another game with an atmosphere I might like or just another game with cool fighting mechanics that would be fun for a couple of hours or maybe just another try at Hotline Miami. And Katana Zero sure excels in all of that, but ends up being so much more. I can't praise this game enough for the way it's built. The fighting feels absolutely amazing, every ability is fun and feels good. The sound design is impeccable. The music ranges from the expected cool adrenaline-pumping synthwave tracks, to the most beautiful atmospheric soundscapes I've heard in a while. And I've been praising video game soundtracks a lot lately, this is one of my favorites. Every moving part in here is stylishly crafted to a level of perfection I haven't seen in a very long time.
The way it's story is told is also mind blowing to me, because of the way they used narrative and audiovisual tricks to tell it in a non-linear fashion through unexpected twists and turns. I've never would have expected to find any of this in Katana Zero. And maybe that's why it ended up being so impactful for me, because I've never played a "2D fighting game" that had me at the edge of my seat for its entirety, because I wanted to know more about the story and the main character.
I urge you to play this game if any of the info you get on it speaks to you. Whether that may be the aesthetics or the fighting or you now knowing that It's story is great. You won't be disappointed, that's a promise.

Let me start by saying, it was a great advantage to wait for the ps5 to play this game. The biggest strength of GoT is it's technical polish and sheer beauty on display. It was a true next-gen experience for me - not only because it ran at a butter smooth 60fps with NO noticeable framedrops at all, but also (and I don't say this lightly) this is just one of the most beautiful open worlds ever built in a game. And the devs sure know how to play out this strength. The best content this game has to offer, shines because of the beauty of this world. Exploring paths to a shrine, writing haikus with sensational views in front of you and just riding into the sunset on your horse through grasslands with unbelievable fidelity and level of detail. The HUD is only visible if you need it in a fight, the atmospheric music is minimalist and everything from menus to cutscenes is just suuuuper polished and clean. The cinematography is pure art and deserves the highest praise. For me this is right up there with the all-time great RDR2, at least visually. Because what made RDR2 so special for me, was its world building and this is something that sadly was average at best in GoT, as mind-boggling as this was for me. The world is beautiful yes, but its practically empty. You have a handful of side tasks, that are repetitive collectibles, you have side quests that are boring and uninteresting with generic stories and than you have the main story, that picks up after a while, but never really captivates.
It just feels lazy and uninspired in every term of the world design, this is as generic as open world games get and that's a shame. The npcs never really move from their spot, they do the exact same thing for as long as you play this game. Enemy AI is as terrible as it gets. Often time you slaughter an entire camp, just to find two or three more guards just a couple of feet away standing still in front of their tent. This happens almost every single time you capture a camp, which is basically 90% of the mission design. No matter what you do, or who you do it with, you end up at some place and just kill every living thing. There is just no variety in the mission design. The only reason this is kinda bearable, is because this game has such a robust fighting mechanic. Fighting is FUN and super stylish. I totally get, why they released the Legends mode as a separate multiplayer experience, because it would've been a waste to only experience it in the singleplayer world.
It's such a shame I did not enjoy my time in this world more. It should've been a much better experience, but Sucker Punch missed the mark here and ends up delivering a slightly better than average AC clone, that’s just much much more stylish.
Also: bonus points for Kurosawa-Mode <3

To be honest, I was hoping to like this game a lot more than I did in the end. Still, especially in the first half it hit me quite hard. Often times conversations left me a bit speechless, because so many of the topics spoke to me and are present at where I’m at in life right now. It became something super personal for me, for better AND worse. Sadly though the narrative took some turns that threw me off and disconnected me emotionally. Especially the ‘revelation’ towards the end was so unnecessary imo. Also the game could’ve been a bit shorter overall. The art style and soundtrack were great, but somehow I’ve come to expect that recently, as most of the smaller games I play really shine in those creative aspects.